Chapter
20

#6: You Shall Not Commit Adultery

In This Chapter

A modern-day interpretation of the sixth commandment

Chastity vs. adultery, lust, and a host of other offenses

Church teaching on homosexuality

The reasons behind bans on birth control and divorce

Chances are this is one of the first chapters you turned to when you started reading this book. Hey, this was the chapter I turned to first when I started writing this book. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that anything related to sex piques our natural curiosity. Or maybe it has more to do with the fact that this chapter covers some of the most controversial topics of our day.

The sixth commandment, as you might have guessed, is about much more than cheating on your spouse. The Church interprets this commandment as covering all aspects of human sexuality, and holds chastity up as the goal for all people, regardless of their state in life. It means whether you are single or married, straight or gay, chastity has a place in your relationship with others and your relationship with God.

In our overly sexualized society, the Church is very often viewed as being anti-sex. Its positions on everything from marriage to birth control are typically viewed as antiquated or oppressive. But the truth is, once you delve into this chapter, you will discover the Church’s teaching on sexuality is really everything but oppressive, and is actually quite beautiful, as long as sex is part of a marriage that is open to the gift of life.

A Primer on Catholic Sexuality

“You shall not commit adultery.” (Exodus 20:14)

The sixth commandment seems simple enough to understand, right? Don’t cheat on your wife or husband. Yet adultery, in its basic definition, is actually a very narrow view of this commandment, so let’s take a closer look to gain the full breadth of this law.

The Church isn’t making this one up as she goes along when it comes to interpreting the sixth commandment. She looks directly toward Jesus and the words he spoke during the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27–28)

Wow, that’s big, isn’t it? We’re talking about thoughts here, not just actions, and that’s pretty much the starting point for this commandment. What it comes down to is looking at human sexuality as part of the bigger picture. The Church sees sexuality as affecting every aspect of the human person, from the obvious—love and procreation—to the esoteric—our bonds with other people.

Every man and woman is seen as created in the image of God, with equal dignity that is lived out in different ways. When it comes to sexuality, the Church sees the union of a man and woman in marriage as a way of “imitating in the flesh the Creator’s generosity and fecundity.” (2335)

Chastity Is Not a Dirty Word

When the Catechism talks about chastity, it is not referring to an absence of sexuality but rather a correct balance of living out an individual’s sexuality. The Catechism refers to chastity as the “successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being.” (2337)

For the record, there is a big difference between sexual activity and sexuality—the two are not synonymous in the Catechism. Sexual activity is exactly what it sounds like: the physical acts. Sexuality, on the other hand, is that aspect of your being that includes not only your sexual desires but also your sexual identity, which are all of the innate qualities that make you a man or woman, including physical, moral, spiritual similarities and complementary differences. For example, a woman’s sexuality would include her maternal instincts and femininity. (2333)

The bottom line is that living out the virtue of chastity means different things for different people, but the end result should be the same—integrity and unity.

A married couple lives out chastity by remaining committed to conjugal chastity, which can be hampered by a whole lot of offenses we’ll get into in more detail in a little bit. We probably don’t think of marriage and chastity as complementary, but the Church views chastity within marriage as a basic foundation that gives strength to the bond between husband and wife.

A single person lives out chastity by refraining from any sexual activity; an engaged person lives out chastity by refraining from sexual intercourse until he or she enters into marriage. (2350) That may not be very popular these days, but the Church doesn’t worry too much about popularity, making no exceptions for those almost-married folks who figure that having sex a few weeks or months before the wedding doesn’t count. It does count.

Those who have taken vows of chastity or celibacy as priests or religious sisters and brothers live out that vow by refraining from all sexual activity in order to give themselves to God alone with an “undivided heart.” (2349)

Although it doesn’t seem so on the surface, it turns out that chastity, while always about sexuality, is often not about sex. In fact, the Cate-chism talks about the fact that chastity can be expressed in friendship as well, whether between members of the same sex or the opposite sex.

How can chastity have anything to do with friendship? Well, if we are living according to our individual and true sexuality, then we will bring certain elements of that sexuality to any relationship, but especially to a close friendship. Perhaps we bring a female sense of nurturing or a male sense of protectiveness. If we are living truly chaste lives, lives that put purity, God, and love of neighbor ahead of selfishness, then what starts out as a simple friendship can grow into a spiritually intimate yet platonic relationship. (2347)

The Catechism says that when chastity is lived correctly within a friendship, it can lead to a “spiritual communion” that benefits all parties involved. (2347)

Offenses Against Chastity

So we’ve talked a lot about what chastity is. Now it’s time to talk about what chastity is not. There is a long list of offenses against chastity in the Catechism. It covers all of the things you probably expect and a few that might surprise you.

Let’s run through the list and see what jumps out at us. Here are the offenses: lust, masturbation, fornication, pornography, prostitution, and rape.

Well, I don’t think we really need to get into why prostitution and rape are offenses against chastity. The Catechism notes them as “gravely sinful” and “intrinsically evil,” respectively, but for the average Joe it is probably one or more of the other items on that list that are cause for concern on a regular basis. (2355–2356)

Let’s start with lust. What’s so bad about it? It goes back to what we talked about at the very beginning of this chapter. Human sexuality is supposed to be part of the whole person. We can’t separate our desire for sexual activity from the other parts of our being—our spirits, our bodies, our minds. Lust, however, is not about this big picture; it’s about sexual desire for desire’s sake alone. It’s not about the unity of a man and woman or about creating children. Lust is, for instance, when a guy tells a girl, “I love you,” but what he really means is, “I love me, and I want you to satisfy me.” So lust is really all about sex, sex, sex, and that’s wrong, wrong, wrong. (2351)

The Catechism understands masturbation to be “the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure.” Suffice it to say, the Church has a big problem with masturbation and considers it “gravely disordered,” because it separates genital activity for the purpose of pleasure from the sexual relationship of marriage that results in unitive and procreative love. (2352) Alone or in collaboration with someone else, for Catholics, masturbation is strictly out of bounds.

So how is fornication any different? Fornication is the “carnal union” of an unmarried man and woman, which once again separates a sexual relationship from a marriage relationship, thereby turning it into something lustful and contrary to the dignity of the people involved. (2353)

Lastly there is pornography. It’s hard to know where to begin with this one, given how our culture is saturated with sexual imagery, from magazine stands to TV sit-coms to the big screen. In this instance, the Church is talking about the deliberate display of nudity or real or simulated sexual acts for a third party. Pornography is forbidden not only because it “perverts the conjugal act” between a husband and wife but also because it injures the dignity of the people involved in producing it. (2354) The Catechism considers pornography a “grave offense” that should be prevented by civil authorities.

Teaching on Homosexuality

When the Catechism talks about homosexuality, it is referring to sexual relations between two people of the same sex, something the Church considers “contrary to the natural law,” closed to the gift of life, and therefore unacceptable in any circumstances. (2357)

At the same time, the Church recognizes that there are many men and women with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” and these men and women must be accepted with “respect, compassion, and sensitivity” and must be free from “unjust discrimination.” (2358)

What the Church says about homosexuality is consistent with what it says about any sexual relations outside the confines of a sacramental marriage. Homosexuals are expected to live chaste lives, just as married and unmarried heterosexuals are expected to live chaste lives. They are called to self-mastery, just as all Catholics are called to self-mastery. (2359)

Sex in Marriage

The age-old jokes about Catholic guilt and sexual pleasure—or the lack of it—can finally be put to rest thanks to this section of Catechism. This is where we discover that the Church believes sex is just fine. In fact, the Church thinks sex, when it is not disordered, is more than fine. It goes so far as to refer to it as “noble and honorable” and a “source of joy and pleasure.” (2362)

So if the Church does indeed approve of sex, how did it get such a bad rap in the public eye? Ah, well, there’s the rub. The Church says sex can only be true and good when it is part of a loving and marital relationship.

Check out this line from the Catechism’s opening paragraph on marital love: “In marriage, the physical intimacy of the spouses becomes a sign and pledge of spiritual communion.” (2360) This is the Church’s view of an ideal marriage, a physical union that is taken to a spiritual level through intimacy. Who’d have thought we would find such romance in the Catechism? And yet there it is, in black and white.

Marriage rises to the level of religious reality and spiritual good in the Catholic Church because a man and a woman, living in fidelity to each other and to God, serve as witnesses to the same kind of fidelity God has for his people and Jesus Christ has for his Church. Over and over, the Catechism puts married love and procreation in close partnership with the divine.

To better explain this type of union, the Catechism relies on the words of St. John Chrysostom, a fourth-century bishop and doctor of the Church who is quoted as saying that young husbands should tell their wives: “I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us.” (2365) Talk about a marriage proposal!

Birth Control

In this section we have to go back to good old “fecundity” and the ability and willingness of married couples to procreate in a generous and loving way. So many people have a problem with this concept that it’s doubtful it can get a fair shake even after thorough explanation, but we’ll give it our best shot.

When the Catechism talks about marriage and sexual activity within marriage, it views their purposes as twofold: unitive and procreative. This means that the relationship draws the husband and wife into oneness, or unity, and at the same time is open to new life, or procreation. (2366)

Actually, the Catechism puts it in a much more poetic way, saying that married couples are called to share in the “creative power and fatherhood of God.” That gives it a pretty hefty spin, doesn’t it? We’re not just talking about having a brood of kids. We’re talking about sharing in God’s creative power. (2367)

Children result from the “mutual giving” of one spouse to the other, making procreation an integral part of the relationship as a whole. Procreation therefore cannot be separated from the marriage act any more than unity can be separated from it. This means that in the performance of marital intercourse, you cannot build a wall between lovemaking and baby-making. (2366)

This brings us to the topic of contraception. And before we get into the issue of artificial birth control, we need to first look at what the Church says in general about having children. The Catechism talks about spacing children from the point of view of responsible parenthood. The reason for spacing children must not be based on the desire to have more material goods, more time, or more of anything else. Parenthood has to be about selflessness as opposed to selfishness. (2368)

So if the Church is saying there is a responsible way to space children, how can the Church also say that you cannot use birth control to manage that spacing? Well, it doesn’t say that entirely. It says you are allowed to regulate having children using methods that rely on periodic abstinence and monitoring of the woman’s fertile and infertile days of the month. The Catechism says such methods not only respect the bodies of spouses but also “encourage tenderness” between them. (2370)

Quoting the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, the Catechism goes on to say any action that attempts to prevent procreation—either before, during, or after the sexual act—is “intrinsically evil.” (2370) That means sterilization or any other contraceptive device or pill is out.

The Gift of Children

The Church considers children a blessing and a gift, not a right or a piece of property. Every child has a right to know his or her parents, the Catechism says, and every child should be respected from the moment of conception on.

In keeping with this view, the Church says that scientific efforts to reduce sterility in infertile couples should be “encouraged.” However, the Church forbids any efforts that disassociate the husband and wife from each other and the unitive and procreative aspects of their marriage in order to conceive. (2376)

This means artificial insemination techniques that replace nature rather than assist it—in vitro fertilization, surrogate mothers, and donated sperm or ova—are all considered gravely immoral and unacceptable. Even nature-replacing techniques that involve only the sperm and ova of the married couple with no outside donors, while less offensive than other methods, are nonetheless morally unacceptable in the Church’s eyes. (2376–2377)

So what is an infertile couple to do? Shouldn’t they, too, get to share in the great blessing of parenthood? The Church says yes; and the Catechism suggests this might be through the adoption of an orphaned or abandoned child. (2379)

On the Offense

Although we previously ran through a whole series of offenses against chastity in general, the Catechism now gets down to the work of spelling out offenses specific to the “dignity of marriage.” Obviously, based on the subject of the commandment at hand, the first and foremost offense listed in the Catechism is adultery.

Adultery

Adultery is marital infidelity, more commonly known as “cheating.” Whenever two people, one of whom is married, have sexual relations outside the marriage relationship, we have adultery. It’s pretty clear. If you have sex with someone other than your spouse, or you have sex with someone else’s spouse, you commit adultery. Remember, Jesus said even thinking about someone lustfully is adultery of the heart.

Adultery is considered an “injustice,” something that not only damages the marriage bond and tramples on the rights of the injured spouse but also damages society and the children who “depend on their parents’ stable union.” (2381)

The bottom line is, don’t sleep with anyone but your spouse. In fact, don’t even think about sleeping with anyone but your spouse.

Divorce Decrees

Here we come to another hot-button topic: divorce. The U.S. Census Bureau says that approximately 50 percent of all first marriages end in divorce, so that leaves us with a lot of divorced Catholics out there. But what does divorce mean for Catholics who can’t stay married but want to remain true to the Church?

Well, according to the Church, those who have been baptized and have entered into a sacramental and consummated marriage cannot undo their “I do’s” for any reason until death them do part. That’s pretty hardcore in this day and age, no?

The Catechism says divorce is “a grave offense against natural law” and attempts to break a contract that cannot be broken. (2384) Remarriage, even when recognized by civil authorities, does more harm than good, creating “public and permanent adultery.”

Divorce is also considered immoral because of the way it disrupts a family and traumatizes children. The Catechism goes so far as to call divorce a “plague on society.” (2385)

The Catechism does have compassion for what it refers to as the “innocent victim” of civil divorce, saying that there is a big difference between the person who chooses to leave the marriage and the one who is left behind. It also says that sometimes marriages end not because either spouse is right or wrong or good or bad, but simply because the marriage cannot work. (2386)

Other Serious Offenses

The Catechism throws together a grab bag of other offenses against marriage that include polygamy, incest, and “free union.” While the first two offenses are pretty straightforward, that last one can slide by almost unnoticed, but it’s a big one.

“Free union” would apply to anyone who is sexually intimate with someone on a long-term basis without the social fact of marriage. In other words, “free union” includes everyone who lives together before marriage or who chooses to live together with no intention of marriage. (2390)

The Catechism states that these types of situations “destroy the very idea of the family” and weaken fidelity. (2390) The Church specifically objects to what it calls “trial marriages,” saying that the sexual union of a man and woman can only exist within a marriage, whereby the spouses give themselves completely to each other. (2391) In other words, living together is not an option, no matter how much money you’ll save on rent in the process.

The Least You Need to Know

Cheating on a spouse is considered adultery and is at the heart of this commandment.

Every person—whether married or single, straight or gay—is called to live out chastity.

The physical intimacy of marriage is a sign of spiritual communion between spouses.

Spacing children through natural methods that include periodic abstinence is acceptable, but artificial contraception is forbidden.

Divorce is often immoral because it destroys the family, traumatizes children, and attempts to break a contract that is breakable only by death.

Living together before marriage or in place of marriage, known as “free union,” is considered a grave sin.